thank you. both. economic skies darkening the political winds blow around the debt ceiling debate is the u.s. preparing for the perfect and anshul storms. the minute mark or doing something behind the dark curtain changing for the world would create. the builder birth there's another secret society right in our own backyard so what exactly happens behind those california redwoods and why should you be concerned about bohemian grove. plus if it bleeds it leads so will obama kill murdoch and settle the political score with news corps once and for all.

good evening it's friday july fifteenth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching our team well let's see we have a country weeks away from defaulting on its debt scared and poor reports it may cut the u.s. as aaa credit rating even if a debt deal is reached by lawmakers one of the biggest media giants in the country and the world is being investigated by the f.b.i. for journalistic wrongdoing a former government employee faces sentencing or actually was sentenced and one of the series of criminal cases that's helping obama out to every previous president for going after whistleblowers well so the pentagon says it suffered one of its largest ever losses of sensitive data from a cyber attack from a foreign government at the same time it unveils a new cyber warfare strategy and all average folks are still sweating an economy

that's taken their jobs their home equity their pensions consumer confidence to the lowest level in two years original lead group that's included presidents and business leaders are headed to a party at a secret retreat in california look at this a happy friday well we'll try to make you happy we have more on all. love that in our show but today first banks are feeling a stress test in europe the debt the debt debate in the u.s. continues unabated and bad economic news continues to pour in so why are the elite sitting partying as i mentioned before could it be because they've been the winners of policies meant to spur a global economic recovery for everyone well for some answers i'm joined by radio host and economics blogger jimmy chicopee nazis in our new york studio. thanks for being here so i was actually in new york on our studio let's talk a little bit about what happened in the world today in europe eight banks failed a stress test two were great five were spanish one other so despite the bailout

somewhere like greece despite austerity measures imposed on the people there as a result of the terms of them have those policies that were meant to curb the euro's and zone debt crisis worked. well i mean no that's true they certainly haven't worked and it's just more bailouts the stress test that we had in europe today are widely perceived to be a joke just like the previous ones because two reasons one they look at a number of reasons but one primary one is that they look at the trade in book another banking book they also don't price in a full default in the haircut that they look at the highest haircut i saw i think were for greek sovereign default and that was around twenty six percent and the market is priced in a much higher haircut for greece so as far as the eurozone debt crisis it keeps rolling on and there's no expectation that that's going to end anytime soon with italy now and these these bailouts as it was the f.s.f. the yes i said they're supposed to end in twenty twenty thirteen i think but that's

when the the s.m.'s but the cake and so they have to really figure anything out the politicians in europe don't really have a clear strategy it seems like and even the e.p.a. the european banking agency i think it's called that was in charge of the stress test has to work with the national governments which have to work with the banks who are very reluctant open up their balance sheet to any any light i think of the just are you know average people who may not know the end out financing or with a plan back in the enduro should they be concerned about the heroes on crisis because of these practices that mean these policies haven't worked you know they were supposed to save the financial sector. well i mean should people be concerned people should be concerned but not not so much because they're not saving the financial sector the financial sector is doing the best they can to me look these bailouts for example for greece and for ireland not really for greece or ireland there for the big banks in europe primarily french and german dead certain german banks certainly french banks for greece. and that's really the concern for them

it's really pushing kicking the can down the road that's why you heard that expression a lot because they're just trying to keep it you know try to try try to remain. solvent liquid in hopes that the economy will turn around as far as the average individual they haven't. they're not going to benefit from this in any significant sense they start over time getting a loan people have a hard time getting a loan for for small business and things like that and people what savings obviously are not getting much of a return at the bank out there when when they leave their money and so for the average person it's really a wash in the way the only real scary thing is if there's a banking collapse what does that do for for the short term in terms of depression and you would have obviously a humongous depression if you had a collapse of the banking system right and speaking of taking to the can down the road that's something we've heard in united states in regards to the debt crisis the u.s. is facing of its own but kind of its own baking lawmakers can't agree on raising the debt ceiling so people are worried about a downgrade but i want to just play what obama said about comparison to euro zone

countries that are in a debt crisis here's what he said contrary to what some folks say that we're not greece you know we're not portugal it turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying form over the last decade we ended up instituting new programs like the prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for we fought two wars we didn't pay for. you know we had a bad recession that required a recovery act and stimulus spending and helping states and all that accumulated for some different factors but you're unique in that you are both great and you live in the u.s. and you've covered the protests in greece and what was going on there so do you see any similarities between the debt certain countries in europe and the u.s. . well there both obviously drowning out our amount of debt it's a big celebrity but but countries in europe they don't have the ability to print

print money to mask the problems in the short term so you're seeing the effects of a large debt burden you're seeing the deflation that goes along with it in the u.s. they're printing money they monetize a lot of that that's what we want that's what you need to especially was about and if we get a three three that's what that's about also it's about keeping the government liquid so they can continue to raise the debt ceiling pay out whatever you know. part of the welfare state that is going to pay out especially the military and of course the banks so the similarity is that that but there's two different approaches just like you mentioned that you know the united states to just raise the debt ceiling will be able to print money they won't need an i.m.f. bailout ever if they raise the debt ceiling if the u.s. dollar continues to be the reserve currency which is a very big difference from what happened in greece or in other countries in the euro zone that we've seen so good that is the u.s.

government taking the wrong thing to focus on when just to name some of the economic news today there are issues consumer confidence is a two year low reflecting joblessness inflation core inflation is rising manufacturing is slumping is focusing on the debt the wrong thing for our lawmakers to be focused on no i think it is the right thing i just don't think that they're really focused because there's a charade i actually don't watch t.v. much but i did catch last night c.n.n. i think is john king who had that big shiny board where he was talking about the dead and you know what needs to happen in this and i don't think anyone really is serious about fixing the debt problems they should be focused on it because that's because going to the big elephant in the room and that's going to be ultimately what you're seeing in europe is going to come to the united states where there's going to come through a deflation because the fed's not going to monetize or you're going to have a inflation to hyperinflation which is why. people like peter schiff other other hyperinflation talk about john williams or people like that but really really just

just want to one or the other should the u.s. government be more focused on debt or more focused on jobs. a lot of the dead because if you have a large debt burden you're not going to have any jobs and and all these voters thought about increasing taxes that's just going to create the economy even more so i think to go ahead and just focusing on jobs the government is not a position to create i'm just sorry we actually have to leave it there but i do appreciate all of your analysis so much i was radio host in economics blogger dmitry kovtun us now at the same time as i mentioned earlier a group of some of the most powerful men in the country are meeting in secret in the fourth of california to do what solve the problems we just talked about or to do have a late cut business and political deals in private have sex with a male waitstaff i don't know exactly but the last three were the allegations that have been made about the goings on at the heaney and grove at the stomping ground

of the union club now critics have called it builder left the club has been around for more than one hundred years and is reportedly attracted presidents from taft and hoover to regen and george bush father and son along with people like alan greenspan clint eastwood colin powell the list goes on here's a look back though. the politics of peace and the environment facing down the power elite. oh the model of the bohemian club is weaving spiders come not here every year at this time the only from around the country got together for two and a half weeks of on and. medium aren't allowed in and in fact that bohemians have a long history of secrecy but some people say with this much power and this much money located in one place there is more to the bohemian club than care fires and canoeing most of the bohemians have left earlier knowing there might be some trouble the stated reasons for the demonstration were the connections of the clubs

members to nuclear weapons research political and business deals made there and the exclusion of women from membership inside the compound there have been persistent rumors about closet homosexuality down hindquarter former waiter says there have always been relationships between club members and employees one black waiter or a gay black waiter years ago said it's whenever they would come over to the employees quarters and he made the comment that it was not unlike coming down from the big hat to the slave quarters for a piece of. wow so all of those were from news reports in the eighty's and ninety's and nowadays you don't really hear as much from the mainstream media about this as alex jones though is one member of the media who has still paid attention he's infiltrated by human growth even in two thousand he sneaked in and filmed the cremation of care ceremony there's a little bit of that. all

the time in the dark across a small wait. a minute block or doing something behind the bar certainly training for the redwood tree. about the ritualistic ceremony that they reportedly have each year now earlier i spoke with alex jones and sulk and i asked him why the go he mean grove doesn't get any mainstream media attention these days and he says well maybe it's because the mainstream media because the people at the top are part of the action is recent. that the c.e.o.'s and presidents vice presidents of the big four networks all attend year after year and you have former presidents you have current presidents you have british royalty that go there helmut schmidt the previous german chancellor wrote a book men in power as a political retrospective and in the book he said look the trilateral commission goes there the goldberg group goes there the leaders the world go there for fifteen

days and a lot of decisions get made there and he admitted that they are establishing a private corporate world government and that one of the most important secret meeting houses is the bahamian grove and richard nixon told harper's magazine in an effort his death the recording was released of the interview that had not been fully published where he did say that it is basically a again meeting that that's the main thread besides politics is that a lot of the major magnets. in corporations and media but also government come there and a male prostitutes are shipped in to service them but my main issue is that the bahamian grove actually has released some of their animals and now berkeley and other universities of sonoma state and they graduate they hatch the manhattan project there of the atomic bomb they brag that they got government and industry to

go to for that the star wars as the guy program in the eighty's so many big events are decided and some of the big deals are made at the bahamian grove and so it is that secret smoky room but it's not a bunch of guys behind closed doors smoking cigars and making decisions with government officials it is a fifteen day retreat with music alcohol all plays ritualistic behavior. as far as concerns over the business and political dealings going on there because that is one of the bigger concerns and you mentioned the hatton project that's one that's been widely cited others that i've seen are they reagan and nixon kind of had private conversations in which reagan agreed he wouldn't run for president so that nixon couldn't nixon said that he gave a speech there that he believes kind of launched his political career but what about any more recent examples of things that are going on there that concern you as far as the policy or political career is being made behind closed doors and not

open to the public. well you talked about the fact that the dominant media of the united states the old line dinosaur media really doesn't talk about he mangrove very much there was an exception. in two thousand right after i got back. from the grove. the announcement was then made on c.n.n. later that the decision for dick cheney to be george w. bush's running mate was made it grow and that was that was said on c.n.n. and when i confronted david gergen at the r. and c. convention in two thousand and four in new york i was very polite but i brought up the rituals and he said listen if you were inside the grove you weren't supposed to talk about that i said no i snuck in there which point the karl rove of five previous administrations blew up at me and got in my face something david gergen

has never been seen to do in the five administrations that he's worked with and thousands of media interviews so this is a big deal to them they wait for decades on a waiting list to get into it and major decisions are being made they are outside of the democratic process and so this is one of the main meeting houses for fifteen days i mean why would why would how do you have these three well how are four people why would why would these heavy hitters the most powerful people in the world travel and spin weeks together for just a party it is a partying atmosphere where they try to cement the elite together and basically create a consensus for an agenda and i've had several of the widows of bahamian grove members send me their internal annals of the you can actually buy from collectors that are thousands of dollars apiece i have several of these and in there there is a very pro world government anti-national sovereignty sentiment running through it

and so that's why it's important. is that so many big decisions are being made and they bring the media the top hollywood people together the head of banking the academia with the government and basically it is a huge networking event where they try to cement this global agenda really quickly though i know one of the things is that reporters have traditionally been kept out that you're saying it now the media has a role there well by reporters being kept out uninvited reporters and i am the only reporter to ever get in and get out and that's because other reporters are greedy they try to sneak in and hang out and hide the woods you know for days they try to come up and ask people questions and then they always get arrested but are you thing i was there in the media are there now and are a part of this gathering now yes yes just like builder will have the major editors

several large newspapers and t.v. networks are events the same thing's going to be me and grow because but human growth has twelve hundred members more than a thousand guests that are vetted and then allowed to come in and so that's why you don't see a lot of reportage on bohemian grove in the news now is because. the media is in on it the media is there meeting with the power structure i will then that would imply that even if he had his arm right away they're more privy to some of these private speeches that are going on so that it would be a little bit more transparent and carry. but we don't really ever see any examples of the a.b.c. c.b.s. n.b.c. fox people that we know have gone there and i mean not just the heads of networks the heads of the conglomerates that go there and our members you don't really ever see them talking about what goes on at the quote lakeside chats where world leaders

basically speak to the crowd and try to sell them on their ideas sometimes many years later in the grove to brag will choose to release the text. that happened a decade before just to show how they basically charted much of the world's destiny that was alex jones radio host of the alex jones show now well that economic news that we've been talking about casts doubt on economic recovery bad news gathering cast doubt on the mainstream media rupert murdoch's news of the world newspaper hacking scandal has taken over american and british headlines but could this type of thing happen in the u.s. well if you think not you might be living under a rock the f.b.i. is on to what they're investigating murdoch's news corps about possibly hacking into the phones of victims of the nine eleven attacks and at the rupert murdoch's

right hand man les hinton a fifty year veteran for murdoch and c.e.o. of gal jones is to leave the company because of the hacking scandal but if that's not enough to convince you with out all of that my colleague. in new york found plenty of evidence that those scandalous u.k. tactics are already here. fix drugs cheating and lies phony political scandal flashing dirty laundry racy made up celebrity gossip and crime stories almost beyond human imagination. old list is served on a platter and sold for a couple of quarters by tabloids headless man in topless bar or something. in the freezer. like i thought they were a journalist michael musto is one of millions falling for the bait after catchy headlines even though he knows the business inside out in america we don't break the law per se but they do have sleazy tactics i mean they will slam

a story they probably make up sources i mean when you read them a source. a source said well who is it many times they can just make up the quote themselves. from queen said blah blah blah a lot of times i feel they're just inventing these quotes to back up the thesis of the story fascination with scandal is almost really just we observed in the u.s. and great britain we are both countries and both media environments gossip sells and there's a tremendous interest in celebrity both countries are of was after rupert murdoch's news of the world newspaper phone hacking shocker broke. his empire stretches wired why across the u.s. as well let's not forget he owns the new york post the wall street journal and the daily protest outside murdoch's big apple protesters demanded an investigation into his publications that we know. because he was and we

want congress to investigate what he's doing here in the united states we don't know if newspapers are acting other people in this country yet i think no reason to put it past them so how far from potential public embarrassment do american newspapers stand but the ones that are owned by rupert murdoch without question the new york post. is one of the most hideous deceitful. tools of criminals that there could be when it comes to getting scandal sold in the u.s. counting on the reader short attention span is a common publishing trick jennifer aniston brad pitt got together about forty two times so far this year and i haven't seen the photographs i gather since two thousand and six they were able to keep selling and repackaging the same story that isn't even a story no publication would admit to paying for. information but that's also often a technicality what a lot of mainstream news publications can get away with doing is going to they won't explicitly give someone money in exchange for an interview someone might set up a terrible organization and then the news what happened to donate twenty thousand dollars

to that charitable organization the culture of sensationalism in the press is putting it into true of journalism on the line the anglo-american style is trashy it's ribald there's just sort of this snickering tone is very american and you know we're a juvenile society where young society i don't really know what that where it's excuses i mean they've been around a long time but. we blame it on because we're their children while some will always remain fascinated by tabloids as right continue to so others have reached a breaking point and i don't have that great of a sense of what happens in britain but i know it's pretty bad here and there are a lot of people who are really upset about the culture news in america and just how little information seems to get out in between all the gossip the press has to be vigilant and in the united states the press has fallen asleep and you know archie new york. now all of this centers around and yet empire of one man rupert murdoch

considered by sun on a potent just less than. media. and i couldn't agree more now to talk further about the man behind the media conglomerate news corps i spoke with jeff cohen he's a journalism professor at the college i asked him first just point blank if you felt rupert murdoch was the most powerful man in media in the u.s. media take a listen i'd say he's the most powerful individual or woman in the u.s. media yes and it is news corps the most powerful media company in the u.s. . maybe maybe not many power or a coworker companies time warner is ok disney is powerful ok by. the sumner redstone. i would use there are no.

big media conglomerates loses their conglomerates for their political and of yes it was a glimpse like murder ok well let's see ok that was murdoch is a demote powerful man in media morning to you and news corps is one of the most powerful media corporations in the u.s. what does it say about the state of mainstream media that the most powerful man in charge of one of the most powerful corporations is falling apart knew a case for this hacking scandal in being investigated in the u.s. for an ethical or possible illegal tactics what does it say about the direction that media has been going i think with or without murdoch. u.s. culture is. there's no doubt about it you know we have jerry springer and we have house which by the way is murdoch we had a current affair for years that was murdoch you know you have been national enquirer which is

a huge circulation all those supermarket tabloids so we've always had a tabloid culture but i think more america's done in the u.s. he's accomplished what do you already accomplished in england which is be the matching. template culture with political news like you know and england the most powerful newspaper arguably is murdoch's son it's the biggest news. so. if. you're. going to. make and if i. just.

think. this right for me and she said you. know. if it's for serious. and. situation. being. a reporter. also. at least.

none of. that. going is much more representative of this country than the lights of new york city will ever be those are some of the stories on tap for next week you won't want to miss them and that's going to do it for now but for the more of the stories we covered today and this week go to r t v dot com slash usa check out our youtube page to you tube dot com slash r t america we have lots more interviews and longer into.